The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus, and more particularly relates to an image processing apparatus in which a designated region on a document image is magnified or reduced to a size designated on the document.
Conventionally, a digital type copier has been well known which is composed in the following manner (disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection No. 157070/1987): a document is optically scanned; the optical image is received by a photoelectric conversion element such as a line image sensor so that the optical image is converted into an electrical signal; this electrical signal is digitized so that digitized image information is provided; and an electrostatic latent image is formed on a photoreceptor by a writing device such as a semiconductor laser in accordance with the image information.
There is provided a digital type color copier provided with editing function to edit and process image information in the manner of color conversion, trimming, inversion, masking and half-tone (disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection No. 27369/1990).
In the case of image processing based on region designation described above, when an image processing region is designated in accordance with information of a color different from a document color to be read, an image to be read is discriminated from information of region designation.
In this connection, the following case frequently arises in which the setting of variable magnification is made on the document in the case where a region on the document image is partially magnified, wherein the setting is not made by a value of variable magnification ratio. In the case of a conventional copier, the aforementioned region to be processed can be simply designated with a color marker, however, it is necessary to indicate a specific value of a variable magnification ratio. Therefore, when an actual variable magnification processing is made, the following operations are required: the size of a region on the image is measured, and the magnification ratio is calculated; or the document image is actually copied by an roughly estimated magnification ratio, and when a required image size is not provided, the magnification ratio is changed and the document image is copied again.
Also, in the conventional copier, image information obtained from the document is inputted into an editor, and variable magnification processing is made by the editor. In this case, it is necessary to display the obtained image information on a displaying device such as a CRT so as to set a magnifying condition. Accordingly, it is difficult to simply magnify an image at an optional magnification ratio.